I have worked on PCs and on Macs and, while I have my preferences, I don't find it crippling to work on one rather than the other.

Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me.

When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity; only the very coolest kids had a phone line of their own, and long-distance phone calls were made after eleven, when the rates went down, unless you were flamboyant with your spending. Then phone calls became as cheap as dirt and as constant as rain, and I was on the phone all the time.

I heard a computer scientist the other day refer to playing with the Kinect as 'storytelling.' At first I thought that sounded a little high-minded, but after trying a few games I could see what she meant.

Oversized houses, like oversized cars, seem to be a particularly American fixation.

Knowledge is a beautiful thing, but there are a few things I wish I didn't know.

When I heard about the Microsoft Kinect, though, I felt an urgency rising in me. A game you played without touching any machinery? A chance to wave your hands around, Minority-Report style, and move things around on a screen? This sounded like almost too much fun, with gadget-y pizzazz that sounded astonishing.